Faculty Summer Reading 2017

Each year, our faculty and staff members read from a selection of books and then gather during opening meetings to discuss and connect the themes to our work for the year. This year, we changed the book selection process. Instead of sending book descriptions in advance and collecting orders, we previewed the books with department heads, stood up during closing meetings to describe each title, and distributed books on the spot. We ordered more titles than needed, and people just selected the book that spoke to them. I thought I would have to return extras, but in fact people left nothing behind. Our faculty and staff love to read!

Here are the UPrep faculty reading selections for summer 2017.

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah

This story of Noah’s childhood connects to our work with global programs, diversity and equity, and social and emotional learning.

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

The Devils Highway: A True Story, by Luis Alberto Urrea

In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, a place called the Devil’s Highway. Fathers and sons, brothers and strangers, entered a desert so harsh and desolate that even the Border Patrol is afraid to travel through it. Twelve came back out. Now, Luis Alberto Urrea tells the story of this modern odyssey. The Devil’s Highway is a story of astonishing courage and strength, of an epic battle against circumstance. These twenty-six men would look the Devil in the eyes – and some of them would not blink.

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, by Jesmyn Ward

This title supports our continuing conversation about race, equity, and current events.

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter navigates between the poverty-stricken neighborhood she has grown up in and the upper-crust suburban prep school she attends. Her life is up-ended when she is the sole witness to a police officer shooting her best friend, Khalil, who turns out to have been unarmed during the confrontation – but may or may not have been a drug dealer. As Starr finds herself even more torn between the two vastly different worlds she inhabits, she also has to contend with speaking her truth and, in the process, trying to stay alive herself.

Teaching in the Fast Lane: How to Create Active Learning Experiences, by Suzy Pepper Rollins

This teaching guide supports our new schedule, in which we have moved from a mixture of 45 and 65 minute periods to consistent 70 minute period.

Teaching in the Fast Lane offers teachers a way to increase student engagement: an active classroom. The active classroom is about creating learning experiences differently, so that students engage in exploration of the content and take on a good share of the responsibility for their own learning. It’s about students reaching explicit targets in different ways, which can result in increased student effort and a higher quality of work.

Using the strategies in this book, teachers can strategically “let go” in ways that enable students to reach their learning targets, achieve more, be motivated to work, learn to collaborate, and experience a real sense of accomplishment.

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future, by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe

This book supports the types of contemporary thinking and decision-making behind our Next Generation Learning strategic initiatives.

The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, just as billions of strangers around the world are suddenly just one click or tweet or post away from each other. When these two revolutions joined, an explosive force was unleashed that is transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments.

Such periods of dramatic change have always produced winners and losers. The future will run on an entirely new operating system. It’s a major upgrade, but it comes with a steep learning curve. The logic of a faster future oversets the received wisdom of the past, and the people who succeed will be the ones who learn to think differently.

In WHIPLASH, Joi Ito and Jeff Howe distill that logic into nine organizing principles for navigating and surviving this tumultuous period. From strategically embracing risks rather than mitigating them (or preferring “risk over safety”) to drawing inspiration and innovative ideas from your existing networks (or supporting “pull over push”), this dynamic blueprint can help you rethink your approach to all facets of your organization.